Bonjour ami!
Je suis heureux que vous soyez ici, j’aime votre visage!
Okay, so, my French is a little rusty, but fingers crossed that I just said,
Hello friends!
I’m glad you’re here, I like your face!
Today, we’re taking a little trip down memory lane, back to where our liaison amoureuse began with Anna And The French Kiss! I read Anna in the summer of 2011 while sitting poolside, laughing out loud and earning myself quite a few curious glances. By the time I finished, I was ready to pack my bags and jet off to Paris!
Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris–until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all…including a serious girlfriend.
But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss.
This is a coming of age story that’s full of fun, humor, romance and hot boys with accents…ACCENTS! Doesn’t get much better than that!
Anna Oliphant gets to spend her senior year of high school in Paris, something she is not too happy about especially since she has to leave behind her best friend, Bridgette, and her little brother Sean. And then there’s Topher, the boy Anna works with and has crushed on FOREVER. Just when he starts to show interest, her dad springs the Paris thing on her. Way to go, Dad!
When Anna arrives in Pairs, she meets lots of new people like Meredith, Josh, Rashmi and Etienne…beautiful, British, brown eyed, perfect haired, Etienne St. Clair…le sigh. He’s funny, charming, kind, has a girlfriend, is fluent in French and—you caught that, didn’t you? Yeah, I thought so—he has a girlfriend – boo! Even so, he and Anna become fast friends. He helps her find her way around Paris and she helps him sort out his family stuff. They quickly realize that they have a lot in common and they also have feelings for each other that go beyond friendship. They ARE in the city of love, but there’s Topher and Ellie to consider too. Le sigh.
Over the course of her time in Paris, Anna learns some hard lessons about love, friendship, and trust. And it wouldn’t be high school without the teenage angst, secret crushes, unrequited love, nasty rumor mills, budding romances, break-ups and make-ups and talks of sex. But there was a sweetness to this story which is what I enjoyed the most. It does have a happy ending, even if it wasn’t the one Anna imagined at the start of it all.
